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How might Mexico City fight coronavirus? Bike paths

Rather than pack people in public transportation, bike paths enhance social distancing.

Sean Szymkowski
It all started with Gran Turismo. From those early PlayStation days, Sean was drawn to anything with four wheels. Prior to joining the Roadshow team, he was a freelance contributor for Motor Authority, The Car Connection and Green Car Reports. As for what's in the garage, Sean owns a 2016 Chevrolet SS, and yes, it has Holden badges.
Sean Szymkowski
Bike path ROYALTY FREE

More bikes mean fewer people taking public transportation to stop the virus's spread.

Reinhard Krull/EyeEm/Getty Images

Every level of government in nations around the world are working nonstop to try and halt the spread of COVID-19, the disease the new coronavirus causes, but Mexico City may take a page from another Latin American country.

To enhance social distancing in a city with many people, the government may set up new bike paths to keep people off public transportation. The news comes from a document published to Twitter on Wednesday by Queen Anne Greenways, a Seattle bike-riding advocacy group. The document shows that plans for new bike paths are in the works.

The image shows the proposed new bike paths for Mexico City with the green lines. The purple lines denote existing bike lanes. This school of thought comes from Bogota, Columbia, which enacted temporary bike paths to help social distancing. It could even be a popular solution for some major cities in the US to keep people moving amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Proposed Mexico City bike paths to battle COVID-19
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Proposed Mexico City bike paths to battle COVID-19

That's a lot of new bike paths.

Twitter

The virus spreads most easily when people are close together, which led countries to adopt stringent social distancing recommendations. Some aren't recommendations but forced lockdowns, in countries such as Italy and France, to prevent people from gathering.

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First published March 19.